Helen Mirren and a nod to the Bard

Sunday

Jun 27, 2010 at 12:01 AMJun 27, 2010 at 12:54 AM

Helen Mirren knew at a very young age that acting was for her. She also knew that Shakespeare was the way to go. “I saw an amateur production of ‘Hamlet’ when I was 13 or 14, and it just absolutely blew me away,” she says by phone from New York, where she’s promoting her new film “Love Ranch,” which opens Wednesday.

Ed Symkus

Helen Mirren knew at a very young age that acting was for her. She also knew that Shakespeare was the way to go.

“I saw an amateur production of ‘Hamlet’ when I was 13 or 14, and it just absolutely blew me away,” she says by phone from New York, where she’s promoting her new film “Love Ranch,” which opens Wednesday. “Hamlet, and Ophelia going mad and killing herself, and the fights and Horatio and Polonius – the story was just so fantastic. My parents had some funky old complete works of Shakespeare, and I started reading it, although I found it – and I still do find it – very difficult to understand the words.” She stops for a moment, as if measuring her own words, then adds, “Of course it helps to see it performed. I slightly feel that Shakespeare shouldn’t be taught in schools. That kids should only be taken to see it acted, then maybe afterwards talk about it.”

The acting bug bit soon after.

“I loved engaging in the imaginative world and being transported into this other fantastical world,” she says. “It was the process of acting that did that for me. I didn’t know that I had a talent. All I knew was that I liked doing it and I loved the world of literature that afforded me the ability to do it well.”

Yet if Mirren’s parents had their way, then she likely would have ended up being a teacher.

“My parents quite rightfully thought acting was not a very good idea,” she says. “Because there was no economic way I could train to be an actor. There were no grants or scholarships. I couldn’t physically go to drama school, so I went to teacher training college.”

But she always found time to act, and her aim was to find a way to continue doing it. Soon after graduation, she joined a repertory company.

“Then I went straight out of the rep into the Royal Shakespeare Company,” she recalls. “I was there for four years, and I didn’t spend a day out of work.”

It was about that time that her parents had a change of heart.

“When they saw that I was earning a living – and I was quite soon earning a very good living – they loved it, and they loved the fact that I was doing Shakespeare as well because it was kind of serious acting.” Like so many actresses of her day, Mirren, 64, tried for a transition from the stage to the screen. It wasn’t easy.

“I was always on the periphery,” she says of the British movie scene in the late-1960s. “There were quite a few much prettier actresses than me who were the ones who got the big roles in the big movies. I got the smaller roles in the art house movies.” But she got a lot of notice in early-’70s films such as “Savage Messiah” and “O Lucky Man!” In 1985 she landed a part in “White Nights,” which was being directed by Taylor Hackford, who already had “An Officer and a Gentleman” under his belt. A year later they moved in together. They married in 1997. Hackford also directed “Love Ranch,” only the second film she’s made with him.

“He was easier to work with the first time than the second time,” says Mirren, laughing. “A film set was still an intimidating, alien place to me then. So I was very much in his hands, and he was great.” There was some thought of working together again over the years, but the right project never came along. Hackford made “Dolores Claiborne” and “Ray”; Mirren did “The Mosquito Coast” and “Gosford Park,” and had a terrific run on TV as Detective Jane Tennison on the “Prime Suspect” series, then nabbed a Best Actress Oscar for “The Queen.”

“Taylor had been looking for something for us to do together for a few years,” she says, “and I had got to a status, in a small way, where he could get a film financed with my name. As soon as that became a possibility, he looked for something we could do together that interested him, and that afforded me an interesting enough role, and he found it in the script for “Love Ranch.” She plays Grace Botempo, opposite Joe Pesci as Charlie Botempo, characters based on Joe and Sally Conforte, who founded the Mustang Ranch, the first legal brothel in Nevada.

Mirren is known for doing a bit of research for the roles she takes.

“I met Susan Austin, who runs the Mustang Ranch now,” she says. “I just hung out with her. I spent an evening with her, following her as she did her job. She was wonderful: frank and honest and really useful.”

Asked why it was more difficult working with her director husband this time, she says, “Oh, only because we were under such stress. It was such a low budget, we were having to work really fast, and it was a project we both really cared about so we wanted it to be good. The first time around there was a luxurious budget. There was plenty of time to do everything he wanted to do, the way he wanted to do it. This was a very different kettle of fish.”

Mirren will next be seen in Julie Taymor’s production of “The Tempest.” It seems that Shakespeare is never far away from her. But this time it will be a little different. There’s been some gender switching, and instead of the usual formula of a man playing Prospero, Mirren will be playing Prospera.

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